Lessons from Scratch-it and how it led to Zembula Dimensions™

At the end of 2012, my co-founder and I thought we had a Harvard business case study-worthy idea.

The Scratch-it idea

Our concept?

Let’s translate the physical scratch card Macy’s sent out in the 1990s for their anniversary sale and update it as a refined digital experience delivered through email.

When we first looked at the landscape, all the digital scratch card options used a fake foil look, and your mouse’s cursor turned into a penny. We wanted to go beyond that.

The explosive growth of smartphones and touch screens became central to the customer experience. So, the timing was right to build a platform that made it easy for brands to create beautiful, elegant scratch cards that perfectly matched any brand.

We filed our patent and were off on our path to success… or so we thought.

Challenges and lessons learned: Clicks vs. revenue

When we launched Scratch-it in 2013, the market noticed us immediately. Brands like Fossil, Verizon, Travelocity, Staples, Hotels.com, Best Western, and others quickly signed up.

We thought we were off to the races! A few years later, we raised a seed round of capital and started to figure out how to retain customers over the long term instead of on a campaign-by-campaign basis.

This is where things got hard.

We created a great product that drove a huge click-through rate to a hosted landing page.

The issue? We had no idea about the revenue lift it drove until one of our customers shared their data. The data showed that landing pages kill performance. The first sign we might have a problem…

Then reality hit. There were some serious flaws with our business model.

• Campaign-driven vs. fully automated.
• Inclusion in any given email might get cut at the last minute.
• Recurring revenue is magical for investing in improving your product.
• You have to be able to prove revenue performance, not just clicks.

Creating a better solution

We had to learn these lessons and many more the hard way, but over time, we started to triangulate what works and hone our craft.

Over the next few months, we’ll share how Scratch-it became Zembula and how we eventually landed on Dimensions™ as the right solution.